Start Your Engines! Angry Birds Go is Out Now | Gameplay Guide

After soft-launching in a few countries south of the equator, Rovio’s newest kart racer, Angry Birds Go! is now available worldwide. The app is completely free to download and will be available for iOS, Android, Windows 8 Phone, and Blackberry 10. As of yet, we have no heard any official statement from Rovio whether it will be released for PC or Mac.

Note, Angry Birds Go is over 90 MBs and requires a healthy amount of RAM. On iOS, it’s a universal app requiring iOS 6.0 or later, and compatible with iPhone 4+, iPod Touch 5g+, and all iPads. Also, the app comes equipped with Rovio Accounts, allowing you to sync your data to the Cloud and continue playing on another device!

Gameplay Basics

You start the game with Red as the only available racer and Seedway as the only track. You must purchase (or TELEPOD-in) a Seedway-permissible cart to start racing.

Carts have four categories: Top Speed, Acceleration, Handling, and Strength. Use Bird Coins to improve these aspects of your cart, which will likewise increase the “CC” of your engine. (CC stands for Cubic Centimeters, which is commonly used to measure the size of an engine.)

Important Note: Once you increase all four cart attributes to their max, your cart automatically upgrades to allow for even more power! The third time you fully upgrade, the cart will be maxed to the limit.

To control your cart, you can either use “touch” controls (pressing the left or right side of the screen will turn) or “tilt” controls (physically tilting the device laterally). There is no gas or break control, though drifting too hard or taking damage will slow you down.

Your drivers can only race five times before needing a rest. To recharge fully takes a few hours, which can be a bit annoying when you only have one or two drivers. As your team fills up, playing time increases.

Episode Selection

Pull Back to Launch!

Chose Your Controls

Coins, Gems, and Cash

Coins are the most common in-game currency. Coins are earned by completing (preferably winning) most races and collecting them in-game. You’ll spend coins to buy new carts, upgrade your cart’s attributes, etc.

Gems are a bit more rare, but by no means impossible to find. Gems are earned by completing challenges (mentioned below), beating Champions, or occasionally collected in-game. You’ll spend gems to buy some carts or skip challenges, or you can buy coins using gems if you’re feeling desperate for an upgrade.

Cash is king. You can’t earn cash besides in your real (non-Angry Birds) life. But you can spend cash to buy gems or carts. Yes, the app has IAPs. (Nervous parent worried about Junior running up your bill? Restrict IAPs!)

Coins in Shop

Games and …

more gems!

Get Ready to Race!

There are five types of play in each Champion’s bracket.

Versus: A simple one-on-one sprint. These are good ways to earn coins when needing to upgrade your cart to attempt other races. There is no “minimum CC” to compete, but rather three separate levels of difficulty.

Race Mode: A Grand Prix event in which you compete against 7 other drivers. You must place in the Top 3 to pass. There is a “minimum CC” requirement for each race, and a total of 5 races per bracket. (Once you pass all 5, “Race Challenges” become available, which can help earn both coins and gems fast.)

Time Boom: You alone race the clock, but the track is littered with ice, wood, and stone. Ice will provide the least resistance, wood will hurt your cart a little, and stone is very harmful. Avoid them all if you can to beat the fuse! Again, there is a “minimum CC” requirement, a total of 5 time booms per bracket, and then “Time Challenges” become available.

Fruit Splat: You compete against one or two piggies. The goal is to break enough fruit to clear away the bar at the top of the screen. It’s easiest to do this when you’re in first place, but clearing the bar is all that’s necessary to pass. Once the bar is filled, the remaining fruit will turn to coins! Again, there is a “minimum CC” requirement, a total of 5 fruit splats per bracket, and then “Splat Challenges” become available.

Champion Chase: As you progress, you must beat each additional character three times to unlock access to them. They won’t go down without a fight, so be prepared to retry a few times! There are high “minimum CC” requirements for these races.

Characters and Abilities

There are 12 total characters to play as or compete against, each with its own special ability. We list the ability that you can use when playing as that characters, but note that each has an additional defensive attack during Champion Chase mode.

Red: Unlocked by default, Red features a 1-time moderate speed boost.

Stella: A defensive gal, Stella can encase herself in a bubble. This will protect from most attacks and on-track debris, and also allows a wider range to collect coins, gems, and fruit.

Bomb: True to his being, Bomb can explode to spin-out and severely damage nearby carts. Bomb’s cart will be unaffected by the blast, but make sure you don’t crash into your competitors.

The Blues: The energetic trio features three mini speed boosts. These can be activated as completely separate points during the race, or in quick succession. The three boosts combined are approximately equal to Red’s single.

King Pig: Lazy to the end, King Pig’s cart features an interesting speed boost. While not super fast, it will raise King Pig off the track for a short while. It’s useful if you’re falling too low in the Air circuit or coming up on a lot of blocks in Race Mode.

Terence: Big, bold, and bothered, grumpy Terence can strike nearby competitors with lightning. The effect is similar, but perhaps slightly less damaging than Bomb’s blast.

Bubbles: Super excited to be included, Bubbles inflates to a massive size and rolls forward. This is useful for pushing race leaders off the track, or for collecting items in a wider range.

Matilda: Whether you love her or hate her, she’s pretty talented here. Matilda can throw her egg bomb ahead to damage carts in front of you! Very useful when playing from behind.

Foreman Pig: Angry and mustached, the Foreman Pig carries three bundles of TMT (I’m not sure what it stands for… maybe Tri-mustache-toluene?). He can throw these forward at separate times, or in quick succession. Definitely an upgrade from Matilda.

Hal: Tired of getting mocked for his beak, Hal fights back with a whirlwind of power! He can summon a tornado, which goes forward and spins out any racer caught in its path.

Corporal Pig: Summons a helmet to revolve around the cart. The helmet protects Corporal Pig and damages anything that would otherwise damage his cart. Can be used up to three times, either simultaneously or sporadically. Lasts for two hits or approximately 15 seconds.

Chuck: Perhaps the most difficult character to beat, Chuck features a 1-time extremely big speed boost. To beat him head-to-head, you must attack early or be left in the dust.

Tricks and Tips

Don’t be afraid to play dirty. When competing against a small field, push sideways on their rear tires to spin them out.

Damaged carts have lower top speeds. If you need to “repair” your vehicle, totaling it completely will respawn a brand new cart.

Don’t get landed on! If a cart lands on your character’s noggin, you might be knocked out of the cart!

Defense is good offense. Bomb and Terence are among the best characters to use in Champion Chase. Get a good launch off the slingshot, avoid the first attack, then blast the Champ! Hopefully their cart will be damaged enough that you can escape to the finish line.

Drift and draft when you can. Drifting occurs when taking corners and your tires slide a bit sideways. Over short distances, you can maintain high speeds while turning! Drafting occurs when you drive immediately behind another cart. The low pressure behind the opponent’s vehicle means less air resistance on your cart, allowing you an attempt to pass.

Don’t restart mid-race! You usually earn coins even when you lose, and coins help make your cart faster.

Beware the Air! The Air circuit is extremely difficult. Your cart may be faster on the ground, but you’ll often find the computer is faster in the air. Try to avoid getting too much height off of jumps, but make sure you reach the other side first!

Versus and Race Mode are great coin earners. Pick a difficulty level that you can win pretty consistently. Not only will you get the indicated payout, but you’ll also earn any coins you collect in-race!

Are you sure that this works, @amslimfordy? I can drift everywhere except in the Air races. There is a challenge where I have to drift 15 times in a race. I try to drift as I did in all the other races, but there is no “drift sound” and the drifts are not counted (so I connote complete the challenge).
Anybody else having this problem?

Dont expect to win the race, but you can rack up drifts by flying off the course in either direction which will force you to respawn…the trick is to continue steering to the left or right as you respawn and you will get a short drift every time.

Currently, I completed about 420 challenges and wanna share some tips to you. Hope it s useful.

– Dont upgrade all your karts if not necessary. In some challenges, they require you to use 5 different karts to complete. I assume that you guys like me, don’t want to use the real money to buy the kart, so don’t upgrade your kart to maximum. The same kart before and after upgrade counts as different one!!

– Each kart has its own characters. Like in the stunt mode, Wall magnet is suit for maximising the high score due to its low stability on handling (drifting makes higher scores). So it s very useful when you need to beat your own scores. So my advice is to use Point Breaker on the earlier challenges to set not to high record scores. This kart is highly precise, easy to use on splat fruits.

– ‘Dont splat any fruits’ challenges, my tips is that I’ll let the opponent go earlier and let him splat the fruits as many as he does. Then I have a clear path to run. It can suit for take no coin, you don’t want to beat or hit any opponents when driving, so let em finish the line!!

– Trash on the opponent. The easiest way is on the beginning when you use the sling shot, try to fly over your opponent, if it s the right time, you ll get it. Or on the tracks, try to run over it.

– In stunt mode, keep your kart undamaged at the end of the line will get you higher scores.

– ‘Splat XX fruits in one drifting’ in some challenges, these are very tough. My tips is to use Bubbles to inflates and roll over while drifting, you’ll easily spat more fruits.

I just downloaded the Angry Birds Go app for my son but it won’t actually start up. When I open the app, it goes to the Rovio screen for a 1/2 of a second then goes to a black screen with an image of a globe and 5 stars in front of the globe that says “calculating download”. After about 1 minute the screen goes to the intro screen of Angry Birds Go but only for a minute then the app closes automatically and I’m back on my phone’s home page. I have a Droid Charge. Please let me know if you have a solution to this issue or any suggestions. Thank you!!

I have the same problem with the “download failed” error happening after the “Calculating Download” message during startup. I’ve reflashed my Nexus 4 and uninstalled and reinstalled the app multiple times since it started happening. A bit annoying since I actually spent a little bit on the in game purchases!!!

Chuck was easy – two or three attempts tops, same as all the other championship races. I mostly found Time Boom races the hardest, except in Stunt where the Fruit Splat races were tricky.

The hardest part of all was completing the game for free while preserving my sanity… it took 12 days total: 5 days of waiting for birds to recharge, 5 days of replaying races to mine gold, and only two days of actual game play.

In Champion Chase, Chuck throws things which speed up your cart when collected. In the 2nd race, I was using Terrence and I was some way behind him. I collected the things which Chuck threw and my cart started to speed up! I call Chuck really helpful!

Just “finished” the game, unlocked all characters and done almost 200 challenges (44, 59, 18 and 57 on Seedway, Rocky Road, Air and Stunt) in a free mode game without paying real money.

I will continue trying to overcome new challenges but, at this point, it’s really difficult (how can you drift in Air?) and very often you have to be very lucky to overcome them, depending more on luck than your skill. It starts to be frustrating. Do you have the same impression?

1. You have to try sometimes and you will get it. You have to be lucky, but you can get it. Be patient.

2. I have done more than 250 challenges and this is one of the most difficult. I use gems to skip these challenges. There are 11 challenges like this one; challenge #4 in Time Bomb, all episodes, all tracks.

I was playing GO on an iPad about a day ago and something happened concerning all the scores listed on the top right of the screen. They all went to zero except my score.
I cleared the browser, shut the iPad down and restarted about three times since.

I then checked GO on the iPhone and the same situation occurred.

Does anyone know what happened?
Has this occurred to anyone else?
Any device?

On both devices I checked to see if I was signed into my account and I was on both devices.

I´ve done 370 challenges and I was not able to overcome the “finish a race with my kart” one. There are 11 challenges like this one: all #4 in Time Bomb, all tracks, all episodes. I used gems to skip them.

Regarding to “sligshot lose behind opponent”, it’s possible but you’ve to be very lucky. I overcame all these challenges without spending gems.

Stunt-Track1, Race Challenge 15 says “Stay in 1st Place for an Entire Race”. I am having trouble with this one. Using some coins to launch with King Sling helps, but some wise-bird always seems to jump way over me during the race, even though my cart is maxed out. Is there a trick? Or should I waste gems to skip this one?

I had many problems with this challenge #15. I used King Sling and Boost… and at the first intersection, choose to go left, up the ramp.
Be patient and you’ll get it. It took ten attempts for me, more or less.

Next two challenges are easy but #18 is more difficult for me: collect 2 or less coins in a race.

for these two, I race myself. currently i need to use 202 gems to skip. But thing is I didn’t use as much as it shows. There’s a time back to the old version when u got the gems equal to the challenge minus one, i.e. you win the challenge 22, you get 21 gems. The number of gems get higher even though u not use to skip it. Most of the challenges I skipped is on the AIR.

I finally did it. I used the Blue birds, cart with medium speed but max control and strength. I did not use any King Sling or Repair or Boost. I got out in front then used each of my 3 special power boosts just before I expected to get overtaken. (Sorry, pushed “Reply” before this, but it did a general reply, not a reply to my post.)

How the heck do you “beat a friend’s score”? Just wondering unless there are literally no other players out there I cannot seem to get any friends on there. Is it linked to FB? When I try to search for the AP on FB it just shows a video, but does not allow game play nor a way to send requests for friends on the game.

I have the same problem. I go to settings and click the facebook icon and all it does is send me to fb page. What do u mean button in front screen? Theres one that says register asking for my birthdate. Is that it?

Haven’t read all the pages, sorry, but it would be nice if there were a list of where characters were available and how many tracks in each course. Haven’t played this for a while, so am not very far along.

Doing challenge rounds in rocky road track one and noticed other racers dropping down, literally out of nowhere, toward the end of the last cave right before the finish line. I managed to turn my cart around to look behind me and it also looks like there are coins up above the regular track. Looks like some shortcut or hidden track but I have looked and looked and can not find it. Anyone else notice this? Can’t tell if it’s an actual track or just an illusion, but I swear I swear there’s another track. Thanks!

Ok, there is definitely another route to get through that last cave. I saw where it comes out at-right as you exit the cave. Is there a map of the course anywhere? I can’t for the life of me find it and it’s driving me crazy! Lol

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